taking the rest of the furniture? There's a pair of silver
candlesticks, and there's a fire-screen, and here's a pair of
brazen-nosed bellows; perhaps you may take a fancy to them?

MARLOW. Bring me your bill, sir; bring me your bill, and let's make no
more words about it.

HARDCASTLE. There are a set of prints, too. What think you of the
Rake's Progress, for your own apartment?

MARLOW. Bring me your bill, I say; and I'll leave you and your
infernal house directly.

HARDCASTLE. Then there's a mahogany table that you may see your own
face in.

MARLOW. My bill, I say.

HARDCASTLE. I had forgot the great chair for your own particular
slumbers, after a hearty meal.

MARLOW. Zounds! bring me my bill, I say, and let's hear no more on't.

HARDCASTLE. Young man, young man, from your father's letter to me, I
was taught to expect a well-bred modest man as a visitor here, but now
I find him no better than a coxcomb and a bully; but he will be down
here presently, and shall hear more of it. [Exit.]

MARLOW. How's this? Sure I have not mistaken the house. Everything
looks like an inn. The servants cry, coming; the attendance is
awkward; the bar-maid, too, to attend us. But she's here, and will
further inform me. Whither so fast, child? A word with you.

Enter MISS HARDCASTLE.

MISS HARDCASTLE. Let it be short, then. I'm in a hurry. (Aside.) I
believe be begins to find out his mistake. But it's too soon quite to
undeceive him.

MARLOW. Pray, child, answer me one question. What are you, and what
may your business in this house be?

MISS HARDCASTLE. A relation of the family, sir.

MARLOW. What, a poor relation.

MISS HARDCASTLE. Yes, sir. A poor relation, appointed to keep the
keys, and to see that the guests want nothing in my power to give them.

MARLOW. That is, you act as the bar-maid of this inn.

MISS HARDCASTLE. Inn! O law----what brought that in your head? One
of the best families in the country keep an inn--Ha! ha! ha! old Mr.
Hardcastle's house an inn!

MARLOW. Mr. Hardcastle's house! Is this Mr. Hardcastle's house,
child?

MISS HARDCASTLE. Ay, sure! Whose else should it be?

MARLOW. So then, all's out, and I have been damnably imposed on. O,
confound my stupid head, I shall be laughed at over the whole town. I
shall be stuck up in caricatura in all the print-shops. The DULLISSIMO
MACCARONI. To mistake this house of all others for an inn, and my
father